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The physics of core-collapse supernovae

Nature Physics volume 1, pages 147–154 (2005)Cite this article

Abstract

Supernovae are nature’s grandest explosions and an astrophysical laboratory in which unique conditions exist that are not achievable on Earth. They are also the furnaces in which most of the elements heavier than carbon have been forged. Scientists have argued for decades about the physical mechanism responsible for these explosions. It is clear that the ultimate energy source is gravity, but the relative roles of neutrinos, fluid instabilities, rotation and magnetic fields continue to be debated.

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Figure 1: The evolution of the temperature and density for the centre of two massive stars, 15 and 25 times heavier than the Sun.
Figure 2: Looking into the heart of a supernova.
Figure 3: Accretion onto the nascent neutron star shows a dipolar character.
Figure 4: The collapse of the core of a rapidly rotating 14-solar-mass helium core yields a black hole and a centrifugally supported accretion disk.
Figure 5: Neutrinos (νe,νμ,ντ and their antiparticles) drive a wind from the surface of the cooling PNS creating the r-process isotopes.

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the SciDAC Program of the US Department of Energy (DC-FC02-01ER41176), the National Science Foundation (AST 02-06111), NASA (NAG5-12036), and the German Research Foundation within the Collaborative Research Center for Astroparticle Physics (SFB 375) and the Transregional Collaborative Research Center for Gravitational Wave Astronomy (SFB-Transregio 7).

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  1. Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics, University of California at Santa Cruz, Santa Cruz, California, 95064, USA

    Stan Woosley

  2. Max Planck Institute for Astrophysics, Karl-Schwarzschild-Str. 1, D-85741, Garching, Germany

    Thomas Janka

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Correspondence to Stan Woosley.

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Woosley, S., Janka, T. The physics of core-collapse supernovae. Nature Phys 1, 147–154 (2005). https://doi.org/10.1038/nphys172

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